overall living expense in nyc is low. as long as you keep your apartment rent low (i have 1650 1bed in astoria - hipsterish part of queens) and don't own a car, and cook you meals (my groceries are around 200USD/month). btw apartments here doesn't require renters insurance

the thing that will hit your wallet are the variety of activities that you can do here in nyc. a cocktail in the city is 18usd, so if you are on a date that's 36 + tips. but once you are a local you'll get to explore the spots that are relatively cheap and where locals go

DO bother roommates with your loud sex. Rub it in their face 😜 extra points if your date walks around the living room the next morning with no pants on. Extra extra points if it's a different girl every time.

Best of luck, my friend. And if successfully accomplish all of the above, let me know your secret.

that happened. the girl has a roommate. and i know she's on the other room because we were introduced (cute too). and when we were having sex this girl is so loud that i think she doesn't really care so i went w/ it and it was porn sex all night.

the morning after i had to take a leak and i walked out naked. so turns out roomate was in the kitchen making coffee in her undies. and when i was coming back she offerred coffee (like this is a normal thing to her seeing naked men in the apartment) and had a small talk. wtf

i think there are pockets on each borough where you can meet quality women you'll just have to know, and i have friends from astoria who would end up in BK or vice versa or even nj or upstate and all that matters is they get laid :) for bootycall/hookup distance is not an issue but for girlfriend type, BK to queens is considered long distance relationship LOL, i guess if you skip 1 borough or your commute requires you to transfer 3trains or takes you about 1hour+ to get there that's the borderline of long distance

@Accenture, how did you find an apartment in Astoria for 1650? Every decent apartment I looked there on StreetEasy is between 2000-2200. Is your place far from a subway stop? How long is the commute to midtown Manhattan?

through zillow, then i called the agent right away and closed it within the day because 4 more people looked at it and i don't want to lose it.

the zip code is 11106 and around that area goes from 1650 (1bed) to 2200 (2-3bed). i'm in between steinway (R line) and broadway (N,Q,W) stations, that's good because it have two options in case one would be under construction. i'm 5 stations away from the city (about 10mins to 59th st) and 10mins uber away from La Guardia which is convenient because i travel to customers

If you're male, it's hard to understate how nice it is to feel like a valued human being due to the flipped gender ratio instead of just another guy contributing to the sausage fest. Here I go to parties and the majority of the people I meet are female, and they are usually friendly. In SF I felt like the rare female would be borderline stuck up and unapproachable due to an overload of male attention.

As far as money goes, your dollar goes a little further in SF, but here you have options to cut expenses down more. Hoboken/Jersey City/Westchester (if you're willing to spend 30 minutes on the metro north each way, breakeven compared to Jersey is 520k earned income) give you a pretty nice tax break compared to CA or NYC for a reasonable commute. Queens, Brooklyn or Manhattan north of 90th ish have pretty good value housing. Also the closer you get to the rivers around Manhattan the cheaper housing is, at least in midtown and above.

In SF there is no such thing as living by yourself for under 2k, and the transit is awful. Crime I think is also worse.

Yea np, Facebook is on East side so you might decide the NJ tax haven isn't worth the multiple train transfers. If you're L4 you'd probably pay ~10k less income tax in NJ but getting to the office would be annoying.